Month: September 2015

I have always considered self-harm to be out of my realm of possibility. I don’t cut myself, I don’t cut my hair when I’m feeling depressed, and i’ve never removed one of my eyebrows. I’ve never given the topic of self-harm much thought, honestly, until the other day, when I was having a particularly stressful conversation with my husband. We were outside talking, and he asked me repeatedly to stop picking. I have been picking at my skin for years. My arms, my shoulders, my neck, my face. Most of the time I don’t even recognize that I’m doing it. I absent mindedly scratch away at my skin until I draw blood. I have deep scars, especially on my arms. Sometimes it takes months to heal, because I keep pulling the skin off to create a fresh wound. He told me that I do it to relieve stress, but that it causes me more stress in the long run, because having a face with bullet sized holes in it starts the cycle all over again.

I have been thinking a lot about why I do this, and i’ve come up with a few ideas.

Stress relief. When I’m frustrated, upset, anxious, I scratch away until I’m feeling better. Although as my husband mentioned, the craters in my skin cause more stress when I look at them, which results in me scratching more.

It feels good. It’s a release of tension. I don’t know that I can accurately describe it, but I can feel areas of my body that feel like they’re going to explode. When I break the skin it literally feels like a release of pressure.

It keeps me from feeling good about myself. There are a lot of times when I don’t feel like I deserve to feel good about myself. When things in my life are headed in a positive direction, I dig in to remind myself that I don’t deserve happiness. I don’t deserve someone telling me I look pretty. I feel ugly on the inside, so I subconsciously make myself ugly on the outside to match. At times my ego seems grandiose, I am skilled at portraying myself as someone who is overconfident, secure in their own skin, someone who can’t be bothered with what anyone else thinks. On the inside I am none of tthos things. I am riddled with self doubt, I hate my appearance, and the things people say and do affect me deeply. I think now that exposing the raw layers of my skin is a way to expose who I really am on the inside. I don’t think it’s working. I’m literally peeling the mask off that force myself to wear everyday.

Self-harm can be so many things and manifest in myriad ways. It’s meaning is personal, and everyone is different. The important thing is to recognize what it is to you, and find your way out. I am in the realization stage. As I’ve been writing this I’ve been clawing at my face. I don’t yet have a plan to overcome this, but I thought writing about it may help sort some things out.

I don’t have acne. I never have.
Have you made it to the other side of self-harm? Leave me a comment and tell me your healthy way of coping with the urge to hurt yourself.

With suicide prevention in the news, I thought given my somewhat intimate knowledge of the subject, I would throw my two cents in. While I believe in talking openly about suicide, I do not, necessarily, believe that it can be prevented. In my experience, if a person is in the mindset that they need to take their own life, they will make that attempt regardless of how many people try to intervene. For those who have attempted to die, many will say that they needed that experience, for many different reasons.

I will speak only on my own behalf; each person’s experience is as intricate and unique as a snowflake. For me, my attempts on my own life came at various stages. After the murder of a friend, after attempting to seek help for mental illness was rebuffed as ‘in my head’, after a quiet but tumultuous battle with PTSD, all very different situations that resulted in the same self-loathing, shame, disgust, rage, and confusion. Each attempt I made was in earnest; I didn’t want to survive and receive treatment, I wanted to throw in the towel. Tired of fighting, battle worn, I needed sleep. I needed to sleep.

No one could’ve prevented what my body was telling me to do. So how, as bystanders, care givers, do we help those afflicted by suicides disease?

Here are my suggestions, based on what I did and didn’t receive during the aftermath of my attempts.

The person who wakes up from a failed suicide attempt is not the same person who made the attempt. It is naive to think that your loved one will emerge with a new zest for life, ready to take on the world with a new appreciation for all of the sights and sounds that the world has to offer. Shame, anger, regret, frustration, more anger: that is what is felt when you realise that after your best efforts to end the terrors in your life were not successful. The hate that consumes you cannot be abated with get well cards, flowers, or whispered conversations between family and medical staff. You don’t need to understand, but a little bit of empathy can go a long way.

Make freezer meals.

Bring books.

Make horribly inappropriate jokes.

Stand up against anyone who plans to lecture or belittle the fragile psyche of your almost departed loved one.

In a shitty situation, Nibs always help make things better.

In short, be who you’ve always been. No one is made of porcelain (except perhaps Tilda Swinton). Being handled with kid gloves only accentuates the above mentioned feelings of shame, guilt, anger, etc. Yes, things are different, your loved one has changed, but by offering a steady hand you are providing an incredible feeling of unity and support. As survivors we know that nothing about our situation is easy for anyone. We know the fear, the anger, the burning desire to grab us by the shoulders and shake us; we feel these things too – amplified exponentially by the demons inside of us that got us to the point of suicide in the first place.

I’ve said it before, and I will say it until I’m blue in the face, suicide is a disease. The only cure is death. No matter how many good days we have, suicide is always lurking, waiting for a vulnerable moment to hit us from behind. Remember this:

Suicide. Is. Disease.

Suicide. Is. Disease.

Find the balance between constant vigilance and being over bearing. That’s where we need you. Always be on the lookout for ‘signs’, but don’t make us feel guilty. The bomb is ticking, but no one knows when the clock will stop. Remember this:

We love you.

We aren’t punishing anyone.

You can’t prevent something that has been preordained.

Your patience means more than you know.

We will work on prevention, we need you to work on acceptance.

Suicide is disease. It cannot always be prevented. Like a cancer it can be aggressive, all consuming. Some strains have cures, some are fatal. In the end, making those afflicted feel normal, valued, unashamed, wanted, needed, those are the things that will make the periods of remission better for all parties involved.